Second Party Advertising on the Internet

Is your dealership currently paying for second party leads on the internet? Do you get a good return on these advertising dollars? At first glance it looks like a cheap investment, but over time is it a cheap investment?

Using advertising dollars effectively on the internet is getting much harder to do. Sure you look and say man I sold 6, 10, 12, 20 extra cars this month. Did you really? How many of those second party leads did you actually sell? 3%, 6%, 12% or a tad higher? Seems cheap to sell a car online until you look at the total picture. What are you comparing the advertising dollars to? Print or radio advertising? There are effective ways to sell on the interent that really don't cost you an arm and a leg.

Your own dealership website is a good location for selling your dealership the most cars. Customers check out your website before they even go into the dealership to test drive a car. Most of these customers don't even contact you first. Some of these customers can't even find your dealership on the internet. Have you ever typed in your dealership name in a Google search? Just the dealership name, no city. Is it on page one Google? Now, type in your dealership name with the city.....Is it on page one Google? Now type in your brand and the city, yes, each brand......are they page one Google? Now type in used cars and your city.........is it there? I am talking about free advertising, not second party, pay per click advertising. Page one Google unpaid advertising is so simple to do.

Using page one Google advertising is such a low cost, effective marketing tool for your dealership. All it takes is a little knowledge, and you can watch your site climb to page one Google on all the searches mentioned above. What, you say? Think your city is too big and someone else just dominates your market on Google? No city is too small or too large to dominate page one Google. All it takes is a bit of knowledge. Make your dealership the dominator today!

How about dominating another market other than your local area? Sure, it is possible to do. Want to dominate the next city over or better yet, multiple cities? Knowledge is money in the presenting of cars and dealerships. Want to learn how to dominate in your area? Send us an email, we can help you start generating "free" advertising dollars within a short period of time.

Why waste your advertising dollars on second party advertising when you can OWN page one Google and generate future traffic for free? Contact us today and we will gladly do a survey for you with suggestions on how to improve your website placement. We don't charge to do the survey, in fact, if you are already doing everything you possibly can for your page one Google, you don't need us. If you aren't doing everything that you can to maximize your exposure, then a one time low fee is assessed. We give you the knowledge to put yourself Page one Google and keep you there! Page one Google placement is so profitable and the good thing is, you keep reaping the benefits for months to come.

Put your auto dealership on the free map to effective online success today. Contact us today!! Tomorrow's profits are at stake.

GM or Chrysler

Do we really wish to either GM or Chrylser declare bankruptcy or go out of business? What would occur if our economy lost the business either of these two Corporations contribute? It is just unreal to me that, the option for either of these Corporation's demise is even on the table for discussion in our media.

Makes me think, what is the Government thinking? Can our government really allow for the demise of either company? Would the ramifications to the economy far outweigh whether or not our grandchildren will have to pay off the debt? There is a balance to be had by good management, labor unions and the government at work here. Do all three have grandchildren?

Internet Sales

I keep reading a lot of articles on what is selling vehicles online. The conscenus seems to be whatever seems to work. Now of course that is the conscenus, but what really sells cars? Salespeople, sure you need the glitz to get the customer to talk to you. How do you accomplish the glitz? Smart marketing, just like your radio and tv advertising. Make the advertisement grab the customer.

Grabbing the customer does not need to be some "new" technology. Make the advertisement easy to read. The interesting thing about the articles that I just read, they were in a new format. How stinking annoying it was also. I had zoom in on the page to see it, no I am not blind! The page was made to fit the screen, but so small it was unreadable to even a gnat. So zoom in I did, then I had to scroll the page by not using the scroller on the mouse. That zoomed the page larger, by the time I had read 3 articles, I was more than annoyed.

Sounds like I get upset easy but honestly it was so annoying it was good enough to put me here on the blog writing about it. Now, for the clincher, it was a Digital Dealer Expert!! Now, I have to ask you, what in the heck is an expert doing using technology that is annoying?

Just food for thought. Couple of the articles were good. Most importantly an article on how each dealership is different and what works for one does not necessarily work other dealerships in their chain. Really good food for thought and another article, coming soon. I need to get more prolific on what sells cars here on the blog.......Tomorrow

Welcome to the Auto Hot Spot

This website is going to be devoted to all the good men and women who are working in a very tough industry. We are the ones that can help each other. You have a forum, you don't have to sign your name unless you want to. You can rant, you can teach, you can give up all of your great secrets to your success. If we all make this blog and website what we need it to be. We will ALL survive the downturn in the auto industry. Got a bank that is buying deep on secondary? Got a good mailer idea that seems to work? Have one of those follow up ideas that is working well for referrals? I have some ideas on selling vehicles online effectively. Yes, even for you old school guys that think the internet is some kind of voodoo that can't possibly sell car.

As my time frees up I am going to talk about how I sold a lot of vehicles online. The training that is out there on HOW to sell online seems like a bunch of bunk to me. Being an auto salesperson, my sales instincts just scream when some smuck that didn't sell spit, tries to tell us how to sell cars online. Why? Because they are a computer geek that can write code and get the vehicle listed, doesn't mean that they can sell one. Best Practices for selling online, sweetie, whatever sells that car. Sure, I need the great glitzy advertisement online to get the car sold. Sure, I need the placement at the top of the page so the customers can find my car. But can I really afford to spend a small FORTUNE to get those cars online?

Traditional advertising has taught the auto dealer that big bucks are required to sell cars. Does the internet sale of a car have to cost BIG BUCKS? Not in my experience. I can put your auto dealership website on page one google and KEEP it there for less than $400 on a one time shot. It isn't just me that can do it, it is a lot of sales companies. Think they are charging $400 to do it? Oh my gosh no, add it up, most dealers pay more than that a month to PURCHASE leads. The same people that would have looked at the dealer's website if it were on page one for the search engines. Sheesh, wake up!!

Who am I? Dang, I am not even sure so don't ask. I just am a little blond in the sticks that happened to sell cars and manage auto dealerships for a lot of years. Too many to my way of thinking. Now I am going to sit online and help the dealers that so need it. Course they have to want it first, then they have to find me. Hmmmmmmmm this is a new blog, Come find me please. I will do everything that I say I can to get the website as page one google by July, 2009.

If you are a dealer that needs help, or an auto salesperson who needs help. I sure hope this site will benefit you. If not, then do you really want help? After all I am old school, I could sell cars before the internet. I am asking for all the great sales ideas that are out there. I am asking for your best practices......sure I have probably heard them before. Surprise me with some really off the wall new ones. Meanwhile, I am gonna sit here and build more of the glitzy templates for your autos to sell online. Gonna write up some honest to gosh sales techniques for selling online in my spare time too.

Recently I was at a Auto Trader training to sell vehicles based on the Auto Trader website. Man dealers, no wonder Auto Trader lists the most cars but DOESN'T sell the most cars. If you are selling 12 a month on Auto Trader, then you should be selling 24 on other websites. Sorry to sound opiniated but I am. Craigslist is free...... Ebay is a ton cheaper than Auto Trader and guess what? They sell more cars off of your auto lots than ANY OTHER WEBSITES, add a few extra sites to Auto Trader's stats and you STILL AREN'T CLOSE!!

I do have to hand it to Auto Trader though, those guys have the people on the ground to talk ya right into what they offer. Gosh they even charge you a fortune for all the "help" that they give you. I am using "help" very loosely here. What do they have? A great listing of autos, where does your autos rank on page one of Auto Trader? Where does it rank on the model you have listed? Pay more, possibly it will show up page one. Pay more and maybe just maybe you will sell a car. Does it cost less than conventional advertising? Yes!! Is it an important website? Yes!! Does it actually sell the most cars? NO NO NO!!!

Sales people, you need to wake up. You sit there on your duff for most of the day. Ok, if you are a smoker, you get a bit of exercise walking outside to smoke. ( I am a smoker, so I know!) How about listing 6 vehicles on Craigslist? In your name, your time, your money if ya sell it..... right? It is FREE!! We can give you the template to use. Even make it special just for you and your cars. You are the guy on the phone selling the car, can ya do car sales on the phone?

They said for years, NOPE, we couldn't sell cars on the phone. I heard it every time I was on the phone with a customer. I heard it from Joe Verde himself!! Get those customers down to the lot instead. WRONG, we can sell cars on the phone. We do it daily. We smile and we gab and we sell cars on the phone. We were just TAUGHT that we couldn't. How good are you on the phone when it is a past customer calling to ask about replacing their vehicle? Darn good, I bet! Well this customer online just happens to have bought his last car elsewhere but he WANTS to buy THIS car from YOU! He is calling you, if you set the advertisement up right. How good are you now? I would like to help you get better at talking to those customers on the phone.

Now, I am going to stay my own sweet backwards opinionated self. Gosh, darn and duff will be my words. I may even call you by "ya". For the very reason that they are the "customers" words. Well, some of the customers, the others are professionals and then I will use YOU. I am going to keep writing and talking and helping ya all till you actually sell a few more cars than ya did last year. 2008 was the year in the auto industry best forgotten. Well, I am here to make 2009 the best auto year ever. Come along for the ride if you want. Don't have a vehicle for the ride, hold on, I am gonna sell ya one, give me your phone number!!